liminfoSitemap Generator
Free web tool: Sitemap Generator
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-25</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
</urlset>About Sitemap Generator
The Sitemap Generator is a free browser-based tool that creates a valid XML sitemap for your website. You add URLs one at a time using the form interface or paste many URLs at once using the bulk-add textarea (one URL per line). For each URL you can set the last-modified date (lastmod), change frequency (changefreq), and crawl priority (priority). The tool generates a correctly formatted sitemap.xml in real time that you can copy to your clipboard or download as a file.
Web developers and SEO professionals use XML sitemaps to help search engines like Google and Bing discover and index all pages on a website, especially pages that might not be easily found through internal linking. The Sitemaps protocol (sitemaps.org) specifies that each URL entry in the XML file can include four optional metadata fields: loc (the URL), lastmod (ISO 8601 date), changefreq (how often the page changes), and priority (relative importance from 0.0 to 1.0). This tool lets you configure all four fields for every URL without writing XML by hand.
Technically, the tool generates a sitemap XML document that begins with the standard XML declaration and urlset element using the sitemaps.org schema namespace. Each URL is wrapped in a url element containing the loc, lastmod, changefreq, and priority child elements. Special XML characters in URLs (ampersands, angle brackets) are automatically escaped to ensure the output is well-formed XML. The generated file can be submitted directly to Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.
Key Features
- Per-URL configuration: set lastmod date, changefreq (7 options from always to never), and priority (0.0 to 1.0 in 0.1 steps)
- Bulk URL import — paste a list of URLs (one per line) to add them all at once with default settings
- Real-time XML preview showing the complete sitemap.xml output as you edit
- One-click copy to clipboard for pasting into your deployment pipeline or CMS
- Download as sitemap.xml file with a single click — ready to upload to your site root
- Automatic XML special character escaping (& becomes &) for well-formed output
- URL counter in the output label showing exactly how many valid URLs are included
- 100% client-side generation — your URL list never leaves your browser
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an XML sitemap and why do I need one?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all important pages on your website to help search engines discover and crawl them efficiently. It is especially important for large sites, sites with poor internal linking, new sites with few external backlinks, or sites with pages that require JavaScript to render. Google and Bing both support the Sitemaps 0.9 protocol.
Where do I put the sitemap.xml file after generating it?
Place the sitemap.xml file in the root directory of your website, accessible at https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Then submit it to Google Search Console under Sitemaps and to Bing Webmaster Tools. You should also reference it in your robots.txt file with a Sitemap: directive.
What does the changefreq field do?
The changefreq field is a hint to search engines about how often a page's content changes — values include always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and never. However, Google has stated it largely ignores changefreq and determines recrawl frequency from its own signals. It is still a best practice to include it as a hint.
What is the priority field and how should I set it?
Priority (0.0 to 1.0) indicates the relative importance of a URL compared to other URLs on the same site. The default is 0.5. Your homepage and most important landing pages typically get 1.0, category pages 0.8, and individual articles 0.6 or 0.5. Priority only affects crawl priority within your own site — it has no impact on search ranking.
How many URLs can I add to a sitemap?
The Sitemaps protocol limits a single sitemap file to 50,000 URLs and a maximum file size of 50 MB. For larger sites you need a sitemap index file that references multiple sitemap files. This tool is designed for manually building sitemaps for small to medium sites. For large sites, use server-side sitemap generation scripts.
What format should the lastmod date be in?
The lastmod field should be in W3C Datetime format, which is a subset of ISO 8601. The most common format is YYYY-MM-DD (e.g., 2024-01-15). The tool provides a date picker pre-filled with today's date for each new URL entry. You can also use more precise formats like 2024-01-15T10:30:00+00:00 if needed.
Can I include image or video URLs in the sitemap?
This tool generates standard page sitemaps following the basic Sitemaps 0.9 protocol. Image sitemaps and video sitemaps use additional XML namespace extensions (xmlns:image and xmlns:video) that are not currently supported. For image and video indexing, use Google Search Console's dedicated image and video sitemap documentation.
How do I add the sitemap to Google Search Console?
Log in to Google Search Console, select your property, go to Indexing > Sitemaps in the left navigation, enter the path to your sitemap (e.g., sitemap.xml), and click Submit. Google will start processing your sitemap and show crawl statistics. You should see the submitted sitemap listed with its status and the number of discovered URLs.